Rosamund Lupton - Afterwards

‘What else?’ you ask and she understands you need to know.

‘We think that the Art room was deliberately chosen,’ she continues. ‘Not only because there was a chance that the arsonist could get away with it – the use of an accelerant being camouflaged as it were by Art supplies – but because it’s the worst possible place for a fire. The Art teacher has inventoried what materials were kept.

‘There were stacks of paper and craft materials, which meant the fire could take hold easily and spread. There were also different paints and glues, which were toxic and flammable. She’d brought in old wallpaper samples for a collage, which we think were coated in a highly toxic varnish.’

As she describes an inferno of poisonous fumes and choking smoke I think of children making collages of hot-air balloons and papier-mâché dinosaurs.

You nod at her to go on and she sturdily continues.

‘There were also cans of spray mount in the room. When they are exposed to heat the pressure builds and they explode. Vapours from the spray mount can travel long distances along the ground to an ignition source and flash back. Next to the Art room was a small room, little more than a cupboard, where the cleaning materials are kept. They too would have contained combustible and toxic substances.’

She pauses, looking at you; sees how pale you are.

‘Have you eaten anything yet?’

The question irritates you. ‘No, but-’

‘Let’s talk more in the canteen. It’s not far.’

It’s not up for negotiation. When you were younger, did she bribe you to eat then too? A favourite TV programme if you finished your shepherd’s pie?

‘I’ll tell them where you are, just in case,’ she says, preempting any arguments.

I’m glad she’s making you eat.

She goes to tell the staff in my acute neurology ward where you will be; you go to tell the burns unit.

Once you’ve gone, Jenny turns to me.

‘It’s true, what Mrs Healey said about the windows not being left open. Ever since that fire-escape accident, they’re paranoid about children falling and hurting themselves. Mrs Healey goes round herself, checking them all the time.’

She pauses a moment, and I see that she is awkward. Embarrassed even.

‘You know when I went to your bed?’ she says. ‘Before Dad got there?’

‘Yes.’

‘You looked so…’ She falters. But I know what she wants to ask. How come I am so undamaged compared with her?

‘I wasn’t in the building as long as you,’ I say. ‘And I wasn’t so close to the fire. And I had more protection.’

I don’t say that I was in a cotton shirt with sleeves I could pull down and thick denim jeans and socks with trainers, not a short, gauzy skirt and skimpy top and strappy sandals, but she guesses anyway.

‘So I’m the ultimate fashion victim.’

‘I’m not sure I can do gallows humour, Jen.’

‘OK.’

‘Positive and even silly,’ I say. ‘That’s fine. That’s great. And black humour, that’s alright too. But when it becomes gallows – well, that’s my line.’

‘Point taken, Mum.’

We could almost be at our kitchen table.

We follow you into the absurdly named Palms Café; the Formica-topped tables reflecting the overhead striplights.

‘Great atmosphere,’ Jenny says and for a moment I can’t work out if this statement is because of her relentlessly positive attitude, inherited from you, or her sense of humour, which she gets from me. Poor Jen, she can’t be positive or funny without one of us taking the credit for it.

Sarah joins you with a plate of food, which you ignore.

‘Who did this ?’ you ask her.

‘We don’t know yet, but we will find out. I promise.’

‘But someone must have seen who it was, surely?’ you say. ‘ Someone must have seen .’

She puts her hand on your arm.

‘You must know something,’ you say.

‘Not much.’

‘Do you know what they were doing to Jenny, when I left her just now?’ you ask.

‘Jen, leave, please,’ I say to her, but she doesn’t budge.

‘They were giving her an eye toilet, an eye toilet , for Christ’s sake.’

I feel Jenny stiffen next to me. Sarah’s eyes fill with tears. I’ve never seen her cry.

She hasn’t yet asked how Jenny is. I see her brace herself. I will her not to do it.

‘Have they told you the chances of…?’ she asks, her voice trailing off, unable to continue. Her life is spent questioning people, but she can’t finish this one.

‘She has a less than fifty per cent chance of surviving,’ you say, repeating Dr Sandhu’s words exactly; maybe it’s easier than translating them into your own voice.

I see Sarah pale, literally turn white, and in the colour of her face I see how much she loves Jenny.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Sarah asks you, and her words could be Jenny’s to me.

‘Because she will be alright,’ you say to Sarah, almost angrily. ‘She will get better .’

‘There were only two members of staff, apart from Jenny, who weren’t at sports day,’ she tells you. ‘We think it highly unlikely it was one of them.

‘The school has a gate, which is permanently locked with a code. The secretary buzzes people in via entry phone from her office. No parents or children are told the code; they all have to be buzzed in. Members of staff know it, but they were all out on the playing field at sports day. So we’re probably looking at an outsider.’

‘But how could they get in?’ you ask. You’d wanted a culprit but now you don’t want that person to have access; as if you can change what’s happened if you prove it was impossible.

‘He or she could have slipped in earlier in the day,’ Sarah replies. ‘Possibly behind a legitimate person who was buzzed in. Perhaps blended in somehow and not been noticed if parents thought they were a member of staff and vice versa. Schools are busy places, lots of people coming and going. Or the arsonist may have watched a member of staff key in the code and memorised it and come back while everyone was out at sports day.’

‘Surely you can’t just walk in, though? Surely…’

‘Once someone is through the main gate there’s no more security, the front door isn’t locked and there’s no CCTV or other security device.

‘That’s really all we’ve got so far, Mike. We haven’t yet made it public that it’s arson. But the investigation is urgent; they’re allocating as many people as they can to it. Detective Inspector Baker is running the case. I’ll see if he’ll have a meeting with you but he’s not the most sympathetic of people.’

‘I just want the police to find the person who did this. And then I will hurt him. Hurt him like he’s hurt my family.’

‘Your definition of “fine” is a more than fifty per cent chance of dying?’ Jenny asks, and I hear a tone in her voice that sounds like teasing, but surely she can’t be?

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t want to look at myself but I do want to know what’s happening. I need the truth, OK? If I ask for it, it means I can take it.’

I nod and pause a moment, chastened.

‘The scarring,’ I say. ‘What I told you about that, it was the truth.’

I see her relief.

‘I will be alright,’ she says. ‘Like Dad said, I know I will. And so will you. We will get better .’

I used to worry about her optimism, thinking she hid behind it instead of facing things.

‘ In a way it’s a good thing, Mum ,’ she’d said about flunking her A levels. ‘ Better to realise I’m not cut out for university now, than three years and a large overdraft too late.’